Cash from chaos: NWA and the Sex Pistols

There have been two genres of music that I love unconditionally — punk rock and gangsta rap.

When I was in seventh grade, I memorized every lyric of N.W.A’s “Straight Outta Compton” and by the time I was a freshman in high school, I had every lyric from the Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks” album permanently burned into my brain.

As different as these two genres are, they are basically built upon the same idea — rebellion against society.

N.W.A was tired of receiving the raw end of Reagan’s American dream: growing up surrounded by racist cops and the negative effects of the crack game.

The Sex Pistols lived in a boring Britain that held no future for the youth.

Both groups, who formed as young angry men a decade apart on separate continents, would follow the same paths in their musical revolution.

They chose their names for the purpose of offending the public, be it the violent connotations of the Sex Pistols or the mix of violence and racial taboos in N.W.A.

Both groups’s managers, Malcolm McLaren for the Pistols and Jerry Heller for N.W.A, were intent on making cash from chaos.

“Anarchy in the UK” was the Sex Pistols’ first single, but just as N.W.A 12 years later, it comes off as more of a manifesto.

The track starts with guitarist Steve Jones hammering away on a G power chord like he’s rallying the troops into battle and then descending into madness as Johnny Rotten lets out the infamous opening lines, “I am an antichrist. I am an anarchist — don’t know what I want but I know how to get it. I want to destroy.” 

The band had delivered their mission statement: a call for chaos.

“Straight Outta Compton,” arguably N.W.A’s first real single, serves the same purpose.

The track opens with a warning, “you are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge,” before going into a hard beat accompanied by police sirens.

Ice Cube then enters into his raw rap chocked full of offensive language, racial slurs and threats of violence.

The song shows this is not a group out to please.

They are, as Eazy-E proclaims in the third verse, “dangerous motherfuckers raising hell.”

Now that we know both bands are angry as hell, we learn why in their next notable songs, “Fuck Tha Police” and “God Save the Queen.”

The Pistols lived in a world that idolized their wealthy and useless Queen, while the lower class had no hope for a better life, a thought Rotten brings home with the song’s tag, “There is no future in England’s dreaming.”

On the single’s cover, the band deface the figurehead of British society, the Queen.

N.W.A.’s anger came out of the racism that locked them in a world of poverty and violence.

“Fuck Tha Police” was the band striking back at the racism they suffered at the hands of those who were supposed to be protecting and serving.

Both bands were too controversial for radio, but they proved that media coverage can be more beneficial than airplay.

When Jones called TV host Bill Grundy a “dirty fucker” live on national television, the following day’s headlines read “The Filth and the Fury” and just like that they were permanently put in the public eye.

The controversial “Fuck tha Police” lead to the FBI and several law enforcement groups publicly denouncing the band.

The controversy helped.

“Never Mind the Bollocks” went to No. 1 on the UK album charts and “Straight Outta Compton” has over three million copies sold.

But after their seminal first albums, everything went downhill.

The lives of Eazy-E and Sid Vicious spiraled out of control as they both ended up dying untimely deaths.

Both groups imploded due to disputes between creative leaders and management. Dr. Dre and Ice Cube didn’t trust Heller’s business practices and Rotten had grown disenfranchised with McLaren’s circus of chaos.

After the departures of N.W.A’s main lyricist Ice Cube and the Pistols’ singer-songwriter Rotten, both bands released lackluster second albums and then disbanded.

N.W.A and the Sex Pistols are consistently regarded as the founding fathers of their genres and their albums were counted in Time magazine’s 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.

With careers lasting only about three years, both bands changed the musical landscape by speaking from the heart of oppressed youth in raw and brutal styles.